Give Us This Day (63 page)

Her head was swathed in bandages and she lay very still, her long, shapely hands spread on the coverlet in what he saw as a gesture of resignation. He lifted one of them and stood holding it, and presently there was a slight break in the rhythm of her heavy breathing and she stirred, her eyes opening, closing, then opening again. He forced himself to smile and something in the refraction of her pupils, and a slight pucker about the lips, indicated that she was half aware of him. His heart thumped painfully against his ribs as he saw, or thought he saw, her trying to frame words.

“Don’t talk. I’m here now, it’s Giles, dearest.” The eyelids fluttered again and the tip of her tongue emerged to moisten her lips. He took a damp flannel from the bedside locker and drew it gently across her mouth and cheekbones. She looked surprisingly young, he thought, about half his own age, and her skin, emphasised by prison pallor, was smooth as wax. He remembered he had always been aware of the texture of her skin, ever since that first impulsive kiss she had given him when, as eighteen-year-olds, they had met under the looming bulk of the mountain at Beddgelert. He reckoned up the interval, a span of something over twenty-five years, but it did not seem so long. More like twenty-five months, a summer’s morning a year or two ago, and yet, in that space of time, her personality had undergone a dramatic change. In those early days she wouldn’t have given a damn about women’s suffrage, miners’ pay, or anything else save how to get her own way in everything. He wondered what agency had transformed her to that extent, from a spoiled millionaire’s brat into a dedicated freedom fighter, willing to sacrifice all she had won from life for deeply-held ideals involved with justice and equity among people of both sexes and all classes. It could not have been his own influence on a personality that had once been as self-centred as that of her father and as feckless as a child. His mind went back to that curious withdrawal of hers before they were married, when she had fled her father’s home and found work in a draper’s shop for a few shillings a week, eating the kind of food they fed paupers at workhouses. He wondered if, for all his love of her and for all his book browsing, he had ever come near to understanding the impulses and aspirations of the brain behind that smooth, white brow. In a way, she was like a woman who had taken the vow and never gone back on it, and he wondered if the sense of dedication that had swept both of them down the years into this murmuring ward would re-occur in either of her boys. He doubted it. More likely it was unique, welling from some Celtic blend of fervour and mysticism in the genes of Cambrian ancestors.

Her eyes were open now and the tapering fingers tightened their grip on the ball of his thumb. He whispered, “Romayne? Romayne, darling?” The slow, painful smile confirmed his belief that she was conscious. She made a distinct sound then and he bent very low over the pillow, without releasing her hand. She tried again and this time he could just identify the word, a single syllable that, in the present context, seemed strange and very moving. It was only part of a word really— “pont,” the Welsh word for “bridge”—but it had a message for him. She had been trying to say Pontnewydd, the name of his constituency, and it seemed to him that in the confused labyrinth of her lacerated brain, she had all but found her way back to the point in their lives where they had discovered fulfilment, both personal and public. For that was the word that had signposted them here to this parting.

Her head lolled sideways, just as the sister reappeared in the aperture of the screens. She lifted the wrist, stood poised for a moment, then looked across at him, shaking her head. She said, very quietly, “I’m so sorry, Mr. Swann.” And then, “I knew her, knew you both. Will you come down again now? I’d like to have a word with you if I may. Mrs. Jeffs has left. She’s been here almost continuously, ever since they brought Mrs. Swann in, but I persuaded her to go home. She needs food and rest.”

He followed her down to the cheerless waiting-room, wondering vaguely what she could have to say to him. When they had passed inside, she closed the door and stood with her back to it, looking vaguely embarrassed.

“The porter is bringing some tea. He won’t be a moment. You’ve had a terrible shock and a long hard drive from Wales.”

“Mrs. Jeffs told you?”

“She didn’t have to. We’ve all three met, you see. Just the once.”

He forced his mind away from the memory of the angled, bandaged head upstairs, trying to identify the woman who stood watching him, her back to the door. She was Welsh. He could assure himself of that much by her accent, and she looked Welsh, too, one of the blonde, less full-faced Celts one met occasionally in the valleys but more often in the north, about L.G.‘s stamping-ground.

“You’re from my constituency?”

“Near it. From Swansea. But you couldn’t possibly remember me. It was so long ago. I was the cause of a… a disagreement between you and your wife in a London shop. You weren’t married then, I believe.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Don’t be. It’s of no consequence, or not to you, Mr. Swann. It’s just that… well, it crossed my mind that it might cheer you a little to know. I was a millinery counter assistant in a shop in Oxford Street, and you and Mrs. Swann came in late at night to buy a hat in the window. I was tired and refused to serve her. Afterwards I fainted and you hustled her out. I never forgot about it because it was the turning point in my life. I suppose that was why I followed your career so closely, and Mrs. Swann’s, too, after she became so involved in the W.S.P.U. It’s terrible for you that this has happened, but it might help people to realize…”

She stopped, giving him time to absorb the astonishing completeness of the pattern involving three lives, perhaps many more. He remembered her now, a tall girl with blonde hair, who had been goaded to mutiny by Romayne’s petulant insistence on getting a hat out of the window at past eleven o’clock at night after the girl had been on her feet for fifteen hours; the intervention of an outraged floorwalker and the girl, probably appalled by her outburst, fainting behind the counter. It was the night he broke off their engagement, seeing no kind of future in their association, but he had been wrong. The incident must have made an even greater impression on Romayne, for it was that which prompted her flight and enrolment in the ranks of the hard-driven. Indeed, her involvement in causes of all kinds had dated from that very moment. It seemed very strange and wonderful that this woman should be present to witness her sacrificing her life for yet another cause. He said at last, “How do you mean—a turning point?”

“I was sacked, without a character. It meant leaving the drapery trade. I took up nursing. I needed that push, and Mrs. Swann did me a good turn because that wasn’t any sort of life. And this…? Well, you’ll understand—one feels useful, needed, more able to help. The way you help people.”

“I wish she could have known.”

“It was hopeless from the start, Mr. Swann. We did everything we could.”

“I’m sure you did. What is your name, Sister?”

“Powell. I’m a senior ward sister, studying for my finals. I hope to get a matron’s post somewhere in a year or so. In Wales, perhaps. There’s plenty of need for trained nurses in that part of the country.” She paused, turning to open the door in response to a knock. A porter came in with a tray of tea, and she took it and dismissed him.

“It is very kind of you, Miss Powell.”

“Nonsense. You can’t leave yet. There’ll be papers to sign in the office.”

She poured his tea and handed it to him. It was scalding and strong, and he sipped it gratefully. She said, hesitantly, “I wonder… would it seem impertinent… would you mind telling me why your wife became a militant? Was it because of your work as an M.P.?”

“No. She was involved in a variety of other lost causes long before I won the Pontnewydd seat. One of them was the pay and conditions of shop assistants. It began on account of you, on account of that silly business about the hat.” And he told her of the sequel to the incident and how, a year after they had parted, he had traced her to a draper’s sweat shop in the north.

“Doesn’t it strike you as a kind of… well, a design of some sort? As though it was a plan, involving all of us?”

“Yes,” he said, “very much so. That’s why I wish my wife could have known.”

“I’ll get those papers. Please help yourself to some more tea.”

“Thank you.”

She went out, her starched skirts rustling like dry leaves underfoot, and he sat hunched, his fingertips seeking warmth from the cup. There was, as she said, “some kind of design,” but what kind, and leading where, was more than he could say. He would have to think about it. Sometime when he felt less tired and drained and hopeless.

* * *

The day after the funeral he accepted his father’s shy offer to take advantage of the frosty sunshine and walk through the woods to the plateau overlooking Denzil Fawcett’s rough pasture at Dewponds. It was a walk they had often taken and one he seldom failed to appreciate for up here, in his father’s genial company, they had discussed, over the years, every topic from hymns to haulage and poetry to poverty.

Adam said, as they emerged from the beech grove, “I’m glad you rejected that showy funeral they were planning to give her. Wouldn’t have suited her nor you. Not your way of going about things.”

Christabel Pankhurst had come to him with plans for a big W.S.P.U. turnout, but he had politely declined the offer, accepting only the magnificent wreath the movement sent her for the grave at Twyforde Churchyard. The cause was very dear to him. But not dear enough to encourage him to use Romayne’s broken body as an advertisement.

They buried her a few plots away from his Grandfather Swann’s grave. It was where he would wish to lie himself, a swallow’s swoop from this corner of the Weald where he and all the other Swanns had been born and reared. It was the first Swann funeral in thirty years.

He said, bitterly, “I’m with them, body and soul, and have been, from the very beginning. I see it as the most important social issue of our time.”

“It’s important, I grant you.”

“But not vitally so? Well, it shouldn’t be difficult for you to see why it is to me. Enough to consider crossing the floor and joining up with the Labour Party. They’re fully committed to Women’s Suffrage. Our people are digging their heels in deeper every day.”

Adam looked at him shrewdly. “You’re saying you could quit the Liberal Party and still hold on to Pontnewydd?”

“Not at first, maybe. Eventually, I’d win it back.”

“In the meantime you’d be prepared to split the vote and let a Tory in?”

“What does it matter, Tory or Liberal? A majority in both parties still regard women as serfs and demand passive acceptance of bed and bondage. How can you work alongside men of that kind? What do their clamours for reform amount to when they’re made exclusively on behalf of the male half of the population?”

“Don’t do it, old son.”

“They’ve got some good men in that minority party. They go a lot further than we’re prepared to go. Not just about this, but about other issues, too.”

“Ah, yes, I daresay, and maybe that’s why I’m doubtful. Not concerning their intentions but their hustle. I’ve read all their speeches and some of their pamphlets, and they mean well enough. But there’s something awry somewhere.”

“Can you explain, Father?”

The climb through the last part of the woods had winded Adam. He found a convenient five-barred gate to lean upon and looked eastward towards the heart of the Weald and the sea.

“No, just an instinct. A prejudice, even.”

“A prejudice against what?”

“Not against anything. A prejudice in favour of something. Of going about reform in the way the English radical always has, a nibble at a time.”

“Does that mean that, deep down, you’re with Asquith, that you don’t feel the women should have the vote yet?”

“No, no… I’d give it ‘em, but it’s only a part of what wants doing and what will be done if we’re not led astray by the grab-alls, the blowhards, and the peacocks.”

“But this is a personal business for me now.”

“So it is, but you’re holding a long line, boy. Plan for a general advance. Don’t spend yourself storming a single redoubt. The strongpoint will be over-run anyway in a general offensive.”

Giles said, gloomily, “Power changes parties as well as individuals. I’ve seen it happening, ever since 1906. We aren’t the same men as we were in opposition all that time.”

”
You
are.”

He turned aside from the gate and seated himself on a convenient log. “Tell you something else, my boy. I’ve been watching you ever since you were in short trousers. I’ve lived a long time, and kept my eyes open most of the time. There’s Alex’s lot, George’s lot, and your lot. The Army, Trade, and Politics. All three of you have had to contend with stupidity, greed, excessive caution, complacency, and so on, and you’ve all worked out your own ways of tackling ‘em. I like your way best. The quiet way. And so, in the main, does the country. Our people aren’t fools. They soon learn to sort out the men they can trust and the men they can’t. Takes ‘em time but they learn, and the difference between you and your friend Lloyd George is a case in point. You decide issues from conviction. His starting point will always be personal preferment. Folk find that out in the end. Go back to your miners and get on with your job. That’s my advice, for what it’s worth. Well, I’ve had my breather. Let’s get on before it clouds over.”

They walked together across the winding heath path, in companionable silence for the most part, but when they reached the briar-sown track down to the curve of the river, where it rejoined the Tryst boundary, Giles said, “What did you mean, precisely. ‘Unless we’re sidetracked by grab-alls, peacocks, and blowhards’?”

“I was looking well ahead. You can do that objectively at my age. I can’t say I am reassured by what I see, for civilisation as a whole or for us in particular. Forty… thirty years ago, the twentieth century seemed a golden age, but it’s like most things we mistake for gold at a distance. When you touch it, it’s pinchbeck. Things seemed to be getting better all the time. Machines were going to give everybody more leisure. Poverty was going to go the way of feudalism. Universal education was going to work wonders. You must have heard it all in your line of business?”